Robert Fisk: The war of humiliation

[cal04]

Our Marines are hostages. Two more were shown on Iranian TV. Petrol bombs burst behind the walls of the British embassy in Tehran. But it's definitely not the war on terror. It's the war of humiliation. The humiliation of Britain, the humiliation of Tony Blair, of the British military, of George Bush and the whole Iraqi shooting match. And the master of humiliation - even if Tony Blair doesn't realise it - is Iran, a nation which feels itself forever humiliated by the West.

Oh how pleased the Iranians must have been to hear Messers Blair and Bush shout for the "immediate" release of the luckless 15 - this Blair-Bush insistence has assuredly locked them up for weeks - because it is a demand that can be so easily ignored. And will be.

"Inexcusable behaviour," roared Bush on Saturday - and the Iranians loved it. The Iranian Minister meanwhile waited for a change in Britain's "behaviour".

(snip)
There is a lot we do not know - or care to know - about all this. In the meantime, however, it will be left to Blair, Bush and the merchants of the SKY-BBC-CNN-FOX-CBS-NBC-ABC axis of shlock-and-awe to play the Iranian game. Will they put Faye on trial? Will our boys be threatened with execution? Answer: no, but be sure we'll soon be told by the Iranians that they are all spies. A lie, needless to say. But Blair will fulminate and Bush will roar and the Iranians will sit back and enjoy every second of it.

more
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/fisk/article2412764.ece

[madrchsod]

1. while the peoples of what is now western europe were

living in the swamps and forests the persians were creating this--->

"The Persian Empire (Iran) established unprecedented principles of human rights in the 6th century BC under the reign of Cyrus the Great. After his conquest of Babylon in 539 BC, the king issued the Cyrus Cylinder, discovered in 1879 and recognized by many today as the first human rights document. The cylinder declared that citizens of the empire would be allowed to practice their religious beliefs freely. It also abolished slavery, so all the palaces of the kings of Persia were built by paid workers in an era where slaves typically did such work. <3>These two reforms were reflected in the biblical books of Chronicles and Ezra, which state that Cyrus released the followers of Judaism from slavery and allowed them to migrate back to their land. The cylinder now lies in the British Museum, and a replica is kept at the United Nations headquarters."

we have much left to learn

[jaysunb]

3. I learned something.

thank you....

[Igel]

2. At least Fisk gets into the right cultural system.

He speaks of humiliation. He may not know any implications of humiliation, he may not be able to bring himself to mention the opposite of humiliation and its implications, and he may not be able to arrive at any kind of conclusion as to how to finesse an outcome. But since he gets close to what's up, at least he can make some predictions.

But he gets far, far closer than any of a dozen pundits I've read in the few days. Fisk's in the right town. The others are still trying to figure out whether they need a ticket to Russia or Brazil: They quite simply can't believe anybody could differ in any way from themselves.

[Karenina]

4. Your reply is interesting...

Just out of curiousity, have you ever lived for any extended period of time outside of your place of birth?

[Igel]

5. No. A few months abroad here, learning Czech.

Some time in Russia.

But I've spent my life learning languages and the cultural reflexes appropriate for them. When I'm in Russia, only my accent gives me away; same for Czech. I'm a translator (among other things that yield little income), and you have to know the culture behind the words in order to know what the words mean sometimes, and know what's normal in order to spot--and translate--what's not normal. Very few words in an utterance are meaningless. After a while you get a good sense for when a word has a meaning slightly different than you'd assume, and you spot when things don't quite make perfect cultural sense so you can pin down the problematic word or expression. I find reading posts like this in English harder than translating from even languages I only know fair to middling well, there's so much less context.

Much of what the Iranians say sounds an off note when I look at it as an American or Czech. It's a little better looking at it as a Russian, but still a lot of the verbiage is throw-away material--something that's only a valid assumption when every other possibility's been checked out and chucked out. But when I put on my "Arabic" hat--sort of what's common to all Arabic countries, not specifically Tunisian or Lebanese--it's mostly in tune; I assume the differences with Persian ideas of honor are a little different, but only a little ... they're completely different from Western post-WWI notions.

[Karenina]

7. Would I be correct to conclude

that you're not too familiar with Fisk, his experiences and writings?

Here's a reply to another thread that is pertinent.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x2793619#2793640

[bemildred]

8. It seemed fairly clear to me that:

1.) The Iranians initiated this "crisis" and have controlled it from the start, and that Bush and Blair were taken by surprise and had no idea what to do other than bluster. Not that there was a lot that they could do, which was the point. But Blair & Bush always seemed behind the curve, the initiative was always with Iran.

2.) This has proved to be a sound move from an Iranian POV for a variety of reasons, and they were very accurate in selecting a weak-spot to dig at, and managing and timing the political theatre.

[stormymonday]

6. Well the media love a 'hostage' crisis

regardless of whether they are the left or right but in human terms are the 15 captives in Tehran really more important than the civilians or soldiers who have already died in Iraq. The head of hysteria that the press have managed to work up over this issue is nauseating, particularly when they have barely managed to mention those who have actually been killed over the past few days. If I was the parents of the British soldier who was shot dead in Basra at the week-end I would be asking why my sons death was largely ignored as a statistic of war whilst endless columns inches were devoted to people that were still alive and will almost certainly eventually be released unharmed.

[ShortnFiery]

9. The USA's M$M only loves their "feedbag" given them by The Military Industrial Complex.

Or do you really think THEY (killing machine corporations and their enabling M$M) are really working for us piss-ant Chattering Classes? No, they serve the war machine because it's them and their Republican sponsors who will allow the M$M to merge into one big FAT entity: USA PRAVDA. :puke: